[Mizza]

I think this really highlights the attitude - don't invest money because it might harm the money. Money is for putting in foreign assets, so that rather than a large amount of money now, you can have a small trickle of money later.

[vidarh]

Rather so that you can have the "small trickle" perpetually.

[Mizza]

Yeah, countries always have this, they're called taxpayers. If you invest in them, they can pay you more taxes than you put in. If you make their lives good, then people can even make _more_ people! Instead, Norway invests in American businesses in order to get that slow trickle, so instead of investing in their own people and industries, they have a slow trickle which can gives pension to a population in decline.

[unyttigfjelltol]

Maybe that's the real nub of the "resource curse"-- any effort to improve the lives of its citizens will be wrong and bad, so just invest in foreign assets and otherwise preserve things as they are.

[knodi123]

Nasruddin was riding his donkey to the market, with his son walking along beside him.

As he passed a group of travelers going in the opposite direction, he overheard one of them saying "look at this cruel old man, riding in comfort while his son has to walk." Caring very much for the opinion of others, he got off of the donkey and told his son to ride.

He passed another group of travelers, and overheard one whisper "look at the silly old man, walking his life away while his young, strong son rides in comfort."

He tried riding behind his son, but overheard people criticizing his cruelty towards the overburdened beast. He tried having them both walk, and was criticized for not realizing that donkeys could be ridden.

Finally, in frustration, he ordered his son to help him carry the donkey. As they both struggled to lift the large and uncooperative beast, another group of travelers approached, staring at him in confusion. Before they could say anything, he shouted at them "Shut up, I don't want to hear it!"

[HPsquared]

This is a classic to remember if you get negative feedback on the internet. There's always a negative interpretation.

[vidarh]

Investment within Norway is high enough that putting more in would drive inflation, at which point you might as well be burning the money, so it's a balancing act.

And the notion that improving living conditions - Norway is already at or near the top of nearly every quality of life measure - increases fertility is directly the opposite of real life global trends.

[Mizza]

It's too exhausting to keep going. It's essentially a religious belief here, for some backwards reason a nation of mortgage holders is fervently obsessed with keeping inflation down and making money by investing in anybody but themselves. If you point out this might not be an optimal medium term strategy, somebody will pull out a list, point at somewhere near the top and say hey, we're doing better than Sweden.

It's good. I think it could _amazing_ if some of the political orthodoxy was reexamined.

[vidarh]

I'm all for investment, but the problem is that there isn't an arbitrary amount of resources to invest in, nor an arbitrary supply of people to do the jobs you want to pay for with that extra money.

As such, if you pour money in you will inherently drive up prices, and inflation is effectively equivalent to applying an extra tax on everyone.

The notion that you can just pour money in and improve everything works at a household level, but is just an incredibly naive view in terms of a national economy.

It's a balancing act.

At the same time Norway, like every other country in the world is heading for a demographic time bomb nobody knows how to prevent, and so holding back money to be able to pay for that without e.g. drastically cutting back pensions and the like matters. Especially given that the "oil fund" is technically a pension fund.

With respect to mortgages, home ownership in Norway is very high in part because buying a house is affordable to the average Norwegian, in part because Norway is one of only a very small number of countries to let you deduct mortgage interest from taxable income.

But make them too cheap for supply of housing to keep up and all you do is drive up the prices and you're back to square one. Another way of saying that: Housing will "never" be cheap, because if house prices drops or interest drops or salaries go up, people buy bigger/better placed houses. We're nowhere near the housing quality where enough people go "oh, my house is big enough / in the most perfect location, I won't bother moving" if they suddenly find they can afford much more.

[MichaelZuo]

You seem to have a religious belief here too, that the average Norwegian resident can be arbitrarily improved by spending more money on them.

[jonsen]

If there's will and ability to pay back.